Have you found a box of photos under Mom's bed?

At some point in our lives, many of us find ourselves with the difficult task of dealing with the household of a departed relative. It's no fun. There are lots of decisions to make. One of those decisions might be what to do with all of those photos that you find in albums, in envelopes, in drawers, or even in a shoe box under the bed. You can't throw them away. It is part of your history; it's part of you.

A friend of mine sent me an email a couple of days ago describing this very situation. Sadly, his mother passed away, and he is dealing with the remaining effects. Actually, I think that is a photo of him at the top of this post. He wants to preserve many of the photos that he has found in a digital format. Over the next few of days, I'd like to give my spin on accomplishing this daunting task.

There are a few topics that need to be considered when dealing with a boatload of old photos. Which images should be kept? Who is going to scan the images? Is there anything important to know about scanning? What is the best way to add "punch" to those faded or discolored photos? What are the choices for saving or archiving images? Wow, that's a lot of stuff to consider.

What photos should be kept? Only you and The Shadow knows the answer to that question, and I haven't put much trust in The Shadow since Orson Wells stopped being the voice of The Shadow. So, I guess the decisions will fall squarely on your shoulders. You can save everything; for some that is a must. But for most of us, there will likely be 3 categories: the absolute gems, those that I can't part with, and the not worth keeping (why did anyone keep these in the first place - because we paid to have them developed - ah, I see). Start sorting; consider how much time you will be willing to invest in each image. If the image needs a lot of restoration work, this may influence into which pile it will reside. Try to keep the images in some rough chronological order, if possible. I know, the person who stuffed them in the box under the bed probably didn't give much thought to chronological order, but you might find it useful when it is time to archive the photo files.

Start sorting, tomorrow it will be time to dive into scanning.